EPS Recognizes Efforts in Particle Physics

The high-energy particle physics division of the European Physical Society honored several people in July at the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics in Aachen, Germany.

David Gross, David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek shared the 2003 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize for their “fundamental contributions to quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong interactions.” The citation went on to say, “By demonstrating that the theory is asymptotically free, that the couplings become weak at large momentum transfers, they paved the way for showing that the theory is correct.” Gross is the Frederick W. Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Politzer is a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech and Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT.

Guillaume Unal, a researcher at Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire (LAL) in Orsay, France, received the Young Physicist Prize for his “contribution to the analysis of NA48 data [from the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron], whereby direct CP violation in K decays was established.”

The Gribov Medal went to Nima Arkani-Hamed for his “original approaches to hierarchy problems in the theories of fundamental interactions. In particular, [he considered] the possibility of large extra dimensions where only gravity can propagate and [explored] its broad phenomenological implications.” Arkani-Hamed is a professor of physics at Harvard University.

The Outreach Prize was awarded to Rolf Landua and Nicholas D. Tracas. According to the EPS, Landua, a research physicist at CERN, “has very efficiently collaborated, on a voluntary basis, in most of the education activities of the Education and Technology Transfer division (ETT) at CERN.” Tracas was cited in part for “promoting the public image of physics in Greece, in particular through programs for high school teachers.” He is an associate professor of physics in the School of Applied Sciences of the National Technical University in Athens, Greece.